@MarksByMallory Glad you are liking the podcasts. It's tricky terrain for sure, but we feel like we have to get out there and talk about these things because we are all dealing with it.

@Nyrryl-Cadiz @KayPotter Yes, I could, but that would be a last resort. Thanks!

Hi everyone! I am a religious podcast listener, but not an active poster on the forums. However, I had to come over and chime in on the question about working moms. I love the podcast, but no offense, Jake, Will and Lee were a little out of their expertise on that one, bless your hearts. 🙂

I really appreciate the previous comments by @Whitney-Simms and @demotlj. I think they add some great perspective.

I am a mom of 4 young kids and I am also a professional working illustrator. I work in art licensing doing a lot of mass market product artwork: notebooks, gift cards, wrapping paper, gift products, fabric, etc. It's extremely hard and a little messy to balance the two, but it can be done. I do only work part-time and I have to be very efficient with my time, but I have a successful career.

One of the most helpful things I can recommend to other moms trying to figure out how to make it work is this podcast:
https://thealisonshow.com/podcasts/ep-77-but-whos-going-to-watch-the-kids-the-great-childcare-debate/

I guess my biggest point I wanted to make is, if you want to make it happen, you can. You don't have to wait til your kids are older. (But also... it's ok if you choose to do that!) I wanted to give that optimistic outlook to other working moms trying to get going on things. It's gonna be hard, its going to take some sacrifice and juggling. Having good childcare or some kind of arrangement like @demotlj mentioned in her "A and B" example is key. Also, we eat frozen things for dinner more often that I would prefer but hey.

@jdubz exactly!

As someone who had to take on cheap jobs just to get a paycheck (by necessity, I started out freelancing on Elance, which has now become Upwork, right when the economy tanked in the US), I’ve been there!

One thing I’ll add is that I personally found it hard to break out, to find that confidence you spoke about and ask for a fair price. Especially since I had a good reputation on Elance and had a lot of offers coming my way — I DID start to charge more, but since your rates are posted front and center on your profile page and your job history (along with the price) is right below that, you have to raise them incrementally. It was VERY SLOW growth, something that I still feel the ripple effect from even 11 years later. Now, looking back, I wish I would have negotiated for higher pay right at the outset, but being naive and desperate for that one job to get started on, I didn’t.

But on the positive side, like @Will-Terry said, it gave me a lot of experience! And I got some of those bad illustrations he talked about out of my system.

So on the one hand, it stunted my professional progress. On the other, it gave me some valuable experience that will only help me moving forward.

I listened to this podcast back in November and was going to write something in this thread. But, ironically, I felt too burnt out to do it when it turned out I didn't remember my password for this forum, needed to confirm my email and stuff like that.

I spent a long time working two jobs and then illustrating books in the evenings. Which was exhausting of course. And I guess I borrowed energy from my future self, because now I can't imagine having the energy to do that for even a week, and definitely not over a year. So this episode definitely resonated with me. Especially the part about losing motivation.

Those books I worked with during that time were finally published last year. And then... nothing much happened and it felt like no one really noticed them. People were too busy worrying about the pandemic to care much about children's books. And part of me felt that it was all a huge waste of time and that I had burnt myself out for no reason. And it's difficult to work up the motivation for new projects when you're feeling exhausted and also always have that part of yourself that thinks that there is no point trying.

So quite the struggle, and I don't quite know where to go from here. But it feels positive that I haven't lost the love of illustration - just the motivation for larger projects.

Hahahaha listening to this while manually (and laboriously) editing a bunch of rgb to cmyk for printing 😂.

@Kim-Hunter This is unavailable in my country 😞

@xin-li That's good to know!!

We just set up a new question page for the podcast that makes it waaaay easier to submit them and for us to organize the questions coming in.

All you need to do is submit it here: https://www.svslearn.com/podcast-questions

We will be prioritizing subscriber's questions first.

Thanks,
Jake

I love the image and I'm glad Jake showed some of the behind-the-scenes of his initial process; it's amazing how much can change, even in the end stages (I'm looking at Rabbit #1's mouth in the large thumbnail). I also find it incredible how Jake is able to create such a variety of characters with such simple shapes! I typically draw my characters with more realistic proportions and I'm always afraid I won't be able to redraw them accurately enough; guess I just have to take the plunge and test if that theory is true, huh? 😅

@Pamela-Fraley
I did a similar thing trying to compare the two, opening up each image in a new tab and essentially playing "spot the difference." The main changes I notice are the background color, an added belt to Rabbit #1, and some tweaked shading on Rabbit #3. While I can't speak for Jake, my assumption for the reasoning behind these choices are: more easy to notice the outlines/dark colors and shapes (such as the gloves and boots), added variety to the outfit, and more smoother/realistic shadows, respectively.

@Elliot same haha. I kind of liked it but I was also confused

@Lee-White thank you!! This is so much valuable! This solves my issue of "floating items" in my illustrations and with only 3 values, it is already so much better!!

I've not had much interaction with people in the art world compared to my other contract work, so take it with a grain of salt 🙂

The biggest thing that's kept me out of doing work for free so far has been a combination of practicing sounding like the person that knows the most in the room and following up every request with a qualifier for what that will take.

If someone says something like "I think we'd really like to expand in that direction" the first thing I saw is something like "Not a problem at all. Based on similar things I've done in the past in that vein, we're probably looking at an additional 'x' amount of hours. Once we get done here I'll send you a quick tally to see what the cost differences will be". It becomes pretty clear that there is an investment and you know almost immediately if they're serious enough to spend more on it or if we want to put it in a phase 2 or something like that 😛

@Eli Yep! Full 78 card deck with booklet and a bunch of other goodies. Custom box too!

@Rachel-Horne lols your very welcome 🙂 🙂 🙂 let us know what you think, if you want.

@tenmei I like this idea! If they decide to go this way I would be up for being in a group together if you think our interests would be similar - I’m leaning towards painterly and loose illustrations mixed with detailed pencil of that makes any sense. I’m working in mixed media right now, oil monoprinting, pastel pencils, graphite, collage, and gouache. I’m trying to create emotion and feeling in my work but I still have a long way to go to figure that out

Americans talking about "Coral":
Is that Choral?
No it's corral
Is it like Walking Dead, "caaarrrrrllll"?
No... it's the one in the ocean....
Ok
ok....

thanks @davidhohn , that's helpful. Yes - always double check the contract! I entered into one which is pretty airtight and all on the side of the contractor - so I have learnt that lesson the hard way. One main problem is i didn't have any standard to go by when i read it - what is normal the first time you do something? So that was an issue.

I remember talking with my tax preparer about this.
The context there was that you can push off business startup costs until a year when you actually owe taxes on profit.

As I am way past that time I sort of locked it away as something to let new illustrators know about when making the school to professional transition.

Thanks for the reminder!

After college, you definitely need to do what you love or work. And by the way, work can be combined during college. You just need to use the service in order to keep up and work and study in college.